This invention relates to an oil separator to improve cooling efficiency of a refrigeration system.
Refrigerant which flows in a refrigeration system of an air conditioner comes to include more and more oil as circulating in the system. Oil increases circulation resistance of refrigerant and decreases heat-transfer coefficient and cooling efficiency. Therefore, oil must be separated from refrigerant.
One of the prior-art methods to separate oil is to dash refrigerant discharged from a compressor against a metallic mesh provided within a discharge pipe so that the oil adheres to the mesh and does not pass therethrough. Another prior-art method is to make discharged gas whirl so as to strike an inner wall of a discharge pipe so that the oil adheres to the wall.
However, those prior-art methods cannot sufficiently improve heat-transfer coefficient of refrigeration system because gas pressure is lowered when refrigerant strikes metal mesh or pipe wall.